Alice: Perception
by Paradox Predator
Summary: Wonderland is darkening. The Hatter wants to fix it, and Alice's Great-great grand-daughter is being driven mad. Can they escape the Jabberwocks and Bandersnatchi?
1. Chapter 1

Perception

…

A madman sat at the head of the table for twelve, sipping his tea. Setting his cup down, he pushed the oversized hat sitting on his blond head back and sighed.

"What's the matter, Hatta?" the Hare asked, before taking a sip of his own tea.

The Hatter got out of his chair, stood on the table and announced "Wonderland is darkening!"

The Hare gave him a look. "Figure that out on your own did you?" he asked sarcastically. "Look around! No one even wants to go through the Tulgey Wood anymore! Bandersnatchi are roaming the forest, there are Jubjubs everywhere, and you just noticed? Hatter, I'm surprised at you! I noticed two days ago!"

Hatta grinned. "How is a raven like a writing desk?" he asked, before ignoring his own riddle and continuing. "I did indeed just notice today. There was a rather odd occurrence with a tove outside of my window. I took the liberty of inviting some guests. And here are the first ones now!"

"Hello!" echoed a cheerful voice through the gate into the Hare's extensive garden. The gate opened, and a woman dressed all in white stepped through. She was followed by a man dressed similarly to her, and another woman dressed all in red. "Hello!" the White Queen called again. "We got your invitation and had to come! I hear that your tea party is amazing!"

Just then, the Dormouse decided to come out of its teapot and join the conversation. "Twinkle, twinkle, little star," it muttered on seeing the newcomers, "royalty from near and far… How's your husband, your Red Majesty?"

The Red Queen gave him a severe look as she sat down and poured herself some tea. "Still sleeping, thank you! Please wake up fully before speaking, and remember to open your mouth a little wider next time!" She gave a smug grin before helping herself to a scone.

"Sorry," sighed the Dormouse. "It's just that I'm so sleepy…" he fell asleep again.

"Foolishness!" came a voice from the gate. "Wake that ridiculous rodent up at once!"

The March Hare looked up to see the Queen of Hearts. _In his garden! _This was too much! "Hatter, I demand that-"

"Ah, Cora, welcome!" Hatta interrupted. "And Scarlett, and Blanche!" he continued, as though he had just noticed the sister queens. "It's so nice to see everyone here! Where's the Duchess?"

"On her way with her cook," the King of Hearts said. "You might want to hide or eat any food you don't want pepper in."

"Ah, yes!" laughed the Hatter. "She does like her spices, doesn't she? Or should I say 'spice'? It is most indubitably the only one I have ever seen her use!"

"Enough talk!" Cora snapped. "Hatta, it's off with your head if you don't tell us what's going on at once!"

March fumed. It's bad enough that all these people had invaded his garden on his friend's invitation, but now they were demanding information or executions? Hardly fair. The brown-haired lagomorph attempted to speak but was thwarted again.

"Surely you have all noticed the newly encroaching presence of danger upon our fair land!" the Hatter exclaimed. "It is this most despicable turn of events that has forced my hand and made me turn hero."

The Hare pounded his head on the table. "That is the last time I let him read Victorian pulp adventure novels," he muttered. "Or let him near a thesaurus…"

…

Alex Liddel was outside her family home in New York, writing. Pushing a strand of mousy brown hair out of her face, she tapped at the keys of her laptop computer. Lost in a world of her own, she looked up and thought about her newest plot development. Just as she was going back to her work, she heard rustling and saw a flash of white in the bushes.

"Hello?" she called, getting up and wandering over to the shrubbery. "Is anyone there?" She decided it was probably a dog or cat and went back to her writing. She was much more interested in crafting the story of Prince Geoffrey and his noble companion than she was in-

Rabbits in waistcoats? What the hell was that doing there?

"Stupid kids," Alex muttered. "Dressing up their stupid pets and letting them go in my stupid yard when I'm trying to write!" she ended in practically a yell. The poor rabbit cringed and- to Alex's great surprise- took a _pocket-watch from its pocket _and checked the time.

"I'm sorry, Miss Alice," it said. "I didn't mean to interrupt your work, but if we don't leave now, we're going to be late for a very important date. Please come this way!" It scampered off into the bushes, leaving a very surprised sixteen-year-old girl behind.

"I- uh- wha?" she stuttered. Then she took off after the rabbit. "Hey, wait, mister! Explain yourself! How on Earth are you talking? My name's not Alice, it's Alex! What's up with the pocket-waaaaaaaaa!"

Alex had tripped into a shallow hole and was now falling very quickly, down a long distance. On the walls of the hole she had fallen down were all sorts of household objects, such as chairs, tables, cupboards and bookshelves.

After Alex got over her initial fear of falling, she was furious.

"What is this? A rabbit hole? Am I in 'Alice in Wonderland'? I'm supposed to say 'curiouser and curiouser' now, right? Not gonna happ-ow!" She hit the floor with a bump. Getting up, she rubbed her bruised rear and looked up. The hole seemed to stretch upwards for miles.

"Really?" she asked. "I'm having the weirdest day of my life. It's not even noon, and I can't even finish a rant without getting hurt? That's twice now!"

Alex looked around. There were about thirty tunnels leading out of the small, well-furnished room she was in. Choosing one, Alex walked down it until she came to a large, round room with almost a hundred doors on the walls.

"Okay," Alex said. "If this is like 'Alice in Wonderland', then the one I'm supposed to take is behind a curtain. Hunting all around the room, she found it fairly quickly before going back to the middle of the room, where a glass table with a bottle on it now stood.

"This wasn't here before!" she announced to no one in particular. "But, I know what happens now." She thought for a moment before calling into the emptiness, "I'm not shrinking until I get the door-key!"

When Alex turned back to the table, an old-fashioned turn-key sat next to the bottle. "Ah, the power of a mind older than seven!" she giggled as she took the key and set it on the floor. Taking to 'Drink me' bottle in her hand, she took a small sip and shrank down to the right size to go through the door. Picking up the key, which now seemed enormous, she fit it into the lock, opened the door, and stepped through and into the garden.

The rabbit was there, waiting for her.

…

**Yeah, so, this story is being written to protest the ridiculous amount of horror stories in the Alice in Wonderland archive. I can only take seeing so many fics with titles like 'Alice in Murderland' before I feel like I want to murder someone. Go write that in American McGee's Alice. This story is fairly dependent on the readers. The more people promise not to write horror fics for this archive, the more I post and the better the story goes. Toodles!**

**Disclaimer: I own Alice in Wonderland as much as Bilbo Baggins does.**


	2. Chapter 2

To say Alex was annoyed would not have been exaggerating in the slightest. She had been stalked by a rabbit, run through a rose bush, fallen down a hole, and shrunk down to the size of a cat. Annoyed may have actually been an understatement of what she was feeling.

Advancing on the rabbit, Alex drew herself up to her entire one foot of height and began to give the poor creature a stern talking to.

"What on earth do you think you're doing, dragging me down here?"

"Well I-"

"I could have gotten seriously hurt! I hope you know that!"

"Hatta said-"

"Actually, I hope you _don't _know that, because it makes what you did even more heartless!"

"If you would just-"

"Excuse me? Did the middle of my sentence interrupt the beginning of yours?"

"It's just-"

"Why did you pull me down here anyway?"

The rabbit waited for a moment to see if she was going to say anything else. When she didn't, he mustered up the courage to speak to this intimidating girl.

"The Hatter said that I needed to bring you here, Miss Alice. Wonderland is getting dark and scary and we don't know what to do! We thought you might know, being the even-number queen."

Finished with his speech, he waited for an outburst from this odd Alice. She didn't really seem like Alice at all, actually, now that he looked at her. She was wearing a pair of trousers and a brightly-colored shirt instead of the blue dress Alice had always worn in Wonderland. Her hair was mousier, although the same color, and…she was older. Alice had always been very young when she came, if he remembered. By all accounts (meaning Humpty Dumpty and the White Queen) she had been seven-and-a-half-exactu-ally last time she had visited.

Alex's mouth hung open. This rabbit thought that she was Alice? Alex had always regarded 'Alice in Wonderland' as a piece of fiction. A piece of fiction written specifically for her Great, great Grandmother, to be sure, but fiction nonetheless.

Her mouth snapped shut.

"Are you saying that 'Alice in Wonderland' is a true story?" she asked.

"Well, I don't know of any stories, but you're here, aren't you? Aren't you Alice?" the rabbit looked very unsure of himself now.

Alex looked around. "Okay," she said. "I think we got off on the wrong foot here. My name is Alexandra Liddel. Please call me Alex. I think that the person you're referring to as Alice might be my Great, great grandmother, Alice Liddel. Where I come from, there's a book called 'Alice in Wonderland', written by a man named Lewis Carroll. He wrote it for Alice. Are you saying it's true?"

"I suppose."

"Wow. What's your name, anyway?"

The rabbit looked around at the beautiful rose garden around them. He really disliked his name, preferring to simply be called 'rabbit', but it was polite to answer direct questions.

"George Lepus McTaggert," he said. Please call me Rabbit, though. I sincerely hate the name George."

Brushing her hair out of her eyes, Alex responded. "I don't blame you. So, let's get going, huh? Take me to see your Hatter!"

"Actually," Rabbit said, "You need to find him on your own. I'm late! Good-bye!" With that, he took off down the hill and through the garden, leaving Alex behind.

"Really?" she called after him. "What the hell?" She sighed. "Guess I better get going, huh? At least there's a path."

…

The path vanished as soon as Alex got out of the garden and into the woods. She wasn't too bothered, though. It seemed that she would have to get somewhere eventually. What with the gigantic amount of signposts everywhere. They didn't seem to make much sense, though.

There was 'DOWN' written on an upward directing sign and 'LEFT' on a sign pointing right. Other signs said things like 'NEAR' and 'SOMEWHERE', while another simply said 'HERE'. Finally Alex saw a signpost that made some sense. There were two signs on it, one said 'TO TWEEDLEDUM'S HOUSE', while the other- pointing in the same direction- said 'TO THE HOUSE OF TWEEDLEDEE'.

"Finally!" said Alex, feeling very relieved. "Something that makes sense!" She ran down the path and quickly found an odd little house.

The house was round. Not in the usual sense of having no corners, but in the sense that the house itself was fat. The walls bulged outwards and gave the impression that the house had wanted to be underground, but had been told no and was trying to make up for it by being as tunnel-like as possible. From inside the house there echoed the sound of arguing voices. Remembering what the Tweedles were like in the book, Alex decided to avoid them and their 'logic' for as long as possible.

There was a well sitting in the front yard. Climbing up to the edge, Alex looked over and saw that it was a very long way down. For some reason, the bucket was up at the top of the well rather than down at the bottom, waiting to be hauled up full of cold water. This required investigation.

Leaning over a bit further than she would have liked, Alex peered into the bucket and was surprised to see a number of lead disks that were probably there for the purpose of wishing. Pulling one out of the bucket, she tossed it down to the bottom of the well. As soon as she heard the faint splash, Alex made her wish.

"I wish that there was someone here to talk to who could turn me back to my normal height and isn't a Tweedle." A tall order, perhaps, but a logical one.

"Tiny lady by the well," said a voice. "I do wonder, can you tell, why it is in Heaven or hell that a raven is like a writing-desk? By the way, your hair still wants cutting."

Alex whirled around to see a Very Strange Man standing before her. And if anyone deserved the capitalization, he did. He wore high, lace-up leather boots over brown plaid pants. His button-down shirt was white, but there were quite a few brown stains that Alex _hoped_ were tea. His vest was orange and purple checked, and he wore a sky-blue frock coat and an enormous, bottle-green top hat. To top it off, he had a long, hawk-nose that neatly cut between heterochromatic eyes of green and violet. The green one had a slit pupil, like a cat's. All in all, he was the oddest looking gentleman (word applied loosely) that Alex had ever met.

"Who the hell are you?" she burst out, and then caught herself. "Sorry, that was rude. But really, who are you and where did you come from?"

The young man swept his hat off and bowed. "Hatta Theophilus Jefferson Hightopp IV!" he said proudly. Straightening up, he continued thoughtfully. "I think it used to just be Hatta Theophilus IV, though. The other names didn't come in until recently. Anyway!" No longer thoughtful, he was now brimming with excitement. "Your wish just brought me from the Tea Party! I have to bring you back! Everyone's going to be so excited that Alice is here-"

"I'm not Alice," Alex interrupted.

"Excuse me?"

"I'm Alice's Great, great grand-daughter," Alex explained. "Alice Liddel died a long time ago, and then my family moved to America. Sorry, Hatta."

The Hatter was drooping. His hat had fallen off of his head and was lying on the ground. "The little girl, dead?" he gasped. "She was the only thing that ever really _happened_ here, you know. She was like my niece, and I was her very annoying uncle. I was older then, but I remember it like it was yesterday…"

Alex felt really low. She had only just met this odd man, and practically the first thing she had done was make him feel terrible. Climbing down from the well, she went over to where the Hatter was sitting on the ground and put one tiny hand on his knee (which was the only part she could reach).

"Hey," she said. "It's okay. Alice lived a long, happy life. She had a book written about her. People all over the world read about her every day."

"Really?" Hatta said as he perked up.

_ Mood swings, _Alex thought. The Hatter kept talking.

"There's a book about Alice? Is Dormouse in it? Is Haigha in it? Am I in it? No, that doesn't matter! What happens in this book? Is it a tale of adventure? Tragedy? Romance?"

"Er, none of those things," Alex explained. "It's more in the 'little girl falls down a hole and weird stuff happens' category… It's hard to explain. I'll see if I can get you a copy."

"You can do that?" gasped Hatta, his air of astonishment amusing the girl at his side. "Callooh, callay! Thank you so very much, Not-Alice!"

"Alex,"

"Whatever. Shall we go?"

Alex was not averse to leaving the sounds of furious arguing in the house nearby, so Hatta lifted her onto his shoulder and they set off for the Tea Party. Along the way, they passed some talking flowers, which the Hatter refused to speak to ("They're naughty"), some green pigs and turtles with shark-heads ("Different species of Rath," Hatta explained), and a large grass-plot surrounding a very small sundial ("That's a wabe").

After they had walked for a while- making sure to bypass a large section of dark forest that Hatta dismissed as 'tulgey'- they came upon a tall, wooden fence with a wrought-iron gate in it. Through the gate came smells of food. Alex inhaled and promptly sneezed.

"Um," said the Hatter. "Looks like the Duchess and her cook have arrived."

Opening the gate, the Hatter stepped through. From her vantage point on his shoulder, Alex could see three queens, two kings, and a duchess. As well as a smiling cat, the White Rabbit, a Hare that kept throwing things at anyone that spoke too loudly, and a Gryphon.

Everyone looked confused as to why the Gryphon was there.

_Well if this isn't gonna be weird, _Alex thought, _you can call me a pony._


End file.
